Word: afghanistanism
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...Suddenly, every aspect of the intelligence community's work in Afghanistan is being called into question. According to a report, made public - remarkably - by Major General Michael Flynn, military intelligence has been "ignorant" about the local power structures in combat areas, imperiling U.S. troops on the ground. And it is likely that the attack on FOB Chapman will spill over into the efforts to train the Afghan army and police - which was always an iffy proposition and now faces a massive security question: How many of these trainees are actually reporting to Mullah Omar and bin Laden? After eight years...
...More ominously, Yemen's social and economic problems have created a vacuum for al-Qaeda to fill. Squeezed out of Iraq and Afghanistan, al-Qaeda operatives have regrouped in Yemen's lawless mountain regions east of Sana'a and have merged with al-Qaeda's Saudi branch to form al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Led by Naser Abdel-Karim Wahishi and Saeed Ali Shehri, a Guantánamo detainee who was released in 2007, AQAP may constitute 200 core members supported by thousands of locals. Terrorism experts worry that with a firm footing in Yemen, al-Qaeda...
...That's why managing expectations down seems a sensible step. Perhaps, if the U.S and its allies play their cards right, with a regional plan to expand economic development in Yemen and coordinate security, the sort of disaster seen in Afghanistan and Somalia can be avoided. "We've seen this movie before, and we know how it ends," says Christopher Boucek, an associate in the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Yemen's problems are really unsolvable. But you can reduce the impact that they will have, make them less bad and increase the chances...
Senior Jordanian intelligence sources speaking to TIME on condition of anonymity have disputed the claim that Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, whose suicide bombing of a U.S. facility in Afghanistan last week killed seven CIA operatives, had been a double agent working for al-Qaeda all along. Instead, they say, after he was initially turned following his arrest by the Jordanians in 2007, al-Balawi had been a useful asset whose work helped the Americans target al-Qaeda leaders. But, they claim, his outrage at the high number of civilian casualties inflicted in the resulting strikes...
...Islamists groups. A mole planted by the Jordanians in al-Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq had provided the key intelligence tip that allowed U.S. forces to kill the group's leader, Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, in a June 2006 air strike. (See an audio slideshow about the war in Afghanistan...